


The Sea of Statues - Chapter 7

by c2t2



Series: The Sea of Statues [8]
Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21522802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c2t2/pseuds/c2t2
Summary: Gathering treasure, new mysteries, and an intense conversation.
Relationships: Nami/Treasure, slight Nami/Zoro/Luffy
Series: The Sea of Statues [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1499105
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	The Sea of Statues - Chapter 7

**Author's Note:**

> Notes at Squizbee Livejournal.

As Zoro took a few steps away from the Mini Merry, gray fog swirled around his hazmat suit as the poison in the air was disturbed. There were no signs of life, no shellfish or seaweed or scavenging birds here on the beach. There was no treasure on the beach either. All of it had been piled into a mountain above the high tide line.

Luffy, Zoro, and Franky lined up at the base of the mountain as Sanji and Usopp were setting up the conveyor belt of buckets.

Small tendrils of the fog were trailing down the mountainside, following the pull of gravity to amass at the base of the mountain.

“Be _super_ careful, everyone,” Franky warned, “Undifferentiated treasure has a highly variable angle of repose, so you’ll need to watch for landslides along with the poison fog and whatever else guards this island.”

Zoro and Luffy made noises of acknowledgement – although they didn’t understand what a few of the words meant – and the three of them took off in different directions uphill. Soon the shore and the other two climbers were obscured by the poison fog.

Zoro started off looking for paper money. He didn’t know squat about appraising gold and gems, but he could read a 5,000 beri note as easily as anyone.

But as Zoro climbed, a few strange things started becoming apparent.

First, there was no paper money. None. The bird had been carrying treasure that included paper money, Zoro remembered, but he could see none of it on his climb up the mountain.

Had exposure to the elements decomposed it?

Had the poison smoke dissolved it?

If the first one was true, there would at least be traces of the money left, right? But no paper remnants were visible among the treasure on the mountain.

Another thing he noticed were the clocks.

At least, he thought they were clocks. They looked like grandfather clocks except for a few details. Zoro ignored them at first, but eventually he had passed so many that he grew curious.

Zoro approached one. It was about two meters tall, and looked like any other ordinary grandfather clock except for the face.

There were no hands on the face, only a small, six-pointed asterisk in the very center. And there were four symbols around the edge – one each at the twelve, three, six, and nine o’clock positions. They didn’t look like anything he had ever seen before, so Zoro moved on.

A minute later, Zoro approached another one. When he scrutinized it, it was identical to the one before it. Zoro looked around at the nearby treasure. Was the surrounding treasure the same as before? Had he doubled back accidentally? Had he been doubling back over and over to this one clock the whole time?

That wasn’t possible. First Zoro did _not_ have a problem with directions, damn it! Secondly, he had been going uphill this whole time, and the Law of Up prevented him from accidentally going in circles.

Right?

Just in case, Zoro picked up an ornate (and completely useless in combat) sword and stood it up in the treasure next to the clock. Then he continued climbing.

A minute later, he saw another clock. He approached it and sighed in relief when there was no ornate sword standing next to it, or anywhere else nearby for that matter.

Following a sudden hunch, Zoro carefully picked his way back down the slope, looking not for the clock, but for the sword.

When he found it, he didn’t know what to think.

The sword was standing upright in the treasure. A clock _was_ visible, but it wasn’t near the sword. It was standing in a completely different pile of treasure.

Either the mountain of treasure had an army of moving grandfather clocks, or the same clock was following him around, appearing in a new place once the one before it had travelled out of sight.

Zoro drew Wado and slashed a shallow cut into the body of the grandfather clock. He continued climbing until he saw another one and approached it. There was no slash mark visible on the new one. This wasn’t a single clock that was following him around.

So he slid back downhill again. He was risking wearing a rut in the side of the mountain.

Once he spotted a clock – in yet another pile near the still-standing ornate sword – he approached it again.

No slash mark.

What.

Were a bunch of new, identical clocks popping in and out of existence all over the mountain? What did that mean?

Zoro resolved to keep an eye on it, but as long as it wasn’t hindering his progress in any way, he supposed he would ignore its presence.

Zoro continued to climb the mountain.

He passed a few more clocks, but more importantly, he still didn’t see any stacks of beri notes.

He was still wondering at the lack of paper money when he reached the top of the mountain.

***

At the very apex of the mountain of treasure, there was a crater, and in the crater was...

Well, Zoro had found the origin of the fog. And it didn’t look like a dragon. …Not any kind of dragon he’d ever heard of.

The gray poison smoke was billowing violently out of a black sphere hovering above the ground in the exact center of the mountaintop crater. Zoro slid his way into the crater, and in a few minutes got close enough to the black sphere to judge that it was about three meters across. Instinct warned him not to get any closer.

So Zoro stopped.

It was eerily quiet, but not completely silent on the mountaintop. The billowing smoke was moving with such ferocity that it seemed like it should be making a lot of noise, but the smoke itself made no sound.

Instead, there was screaming.

Coming from the strange black sphere was more than smoke. Also emitting from the blackness were the faint sounds of distant screams.

He couldn’t make out any details of the voices, but the faraway screams made the hair on his neck stand up as he took a few steps back, eyeing the black mass with extreme caution.

“What is going on here?” he muttered to himself. The only response to his question came in the form of more screaming and smoke from the black sphere.

Zoro’s skillset mostly amounted to cutting things. And try as he might, he couldn’t see how cutting the sphere would help the situation in any way.

What was he supposed to do here?

This was beyond Zoro’s job description. He’d take the information to the rest of the crew and they’d decide what to do then.

Zoro climbed out of the crater, passing the grandfather clock on the lip of the crater that Zoro was positive had not been there before.

He couldn’t return empty-handed, though. He’d been sent up here to bring down treasure for Nami to sort through. He’d delayed long enough.

Zoro finally accepted that he wasn’t going to find any stacks of paper money at all, never mind beri notes, never mind beri notes worth 5,000 or more. So he’d grab some other stuff instead.

Nami wanted things more valuable than gold, and most of those things seemed to be gemstones. So Zoro would grab gemstones.

That seemed logical enough, so Zoro carefully picked his way down the mountain, grabbing the occasional bejeweled item or some of the larger freestanding gems. The silvery-looking stuff was all tarnished, most of it nearly black, so he ignored that along with the huge piles of coins. Same with the copper – much of which had turned green. This stuff had been here for a while. He left the antique-looking things and ceremonial items as well, unless there were particularly interesting-looking gemstones on them.

Then there was gold. Lots and lots of gold. Gold in all shapes and sizes. Nami was looking for something about gold that had to do with the number 24, Zoro remembered. Most of the gold bullion had no numbers on it, so he only picked up the stuff that was also jewel-encrusted.

Then he came upon a few bricks that had “24KT” stamped on them. Eureka.

Zoro quickly filled the bags he’d brought with him, and continued down the mountain, pausing only to trade some of his items out for others he’d found that looked more promising. 

He ignored the clocks.

Zoro had been navigating using the Law of Up, so when he re-emerged on the beach, he was confident he wasn’t too far from where he’d started. But somehow, even the Law of Up failed him this time, and it was a great deal of walking along the coast before the poison fog hovering on the shore parted and brought him in sight of the Mini Merry and the bucket crew.

“Nice of you to show up, Marimo,” Sanji snarled at him irately, “Where the hell have you been all this time?”

Zoro briefly considered making a ‘your mother’ joke, or just cutting the bastard, but eventually settled for sneering at him as he plopped his bags of treasure down on the beach.

Usopp immediately started unpacking them.

“Ooh, this is interesting!” the sniper marveled, “Franky has been focusing on gold ingots and Luffy is just bringing back junk. Some of this might actually be what Nami wants!”

As Zoro emptied the rest of the sacks, he asked, “Everyone else is okay, then?”

Sanji started to complain, “The shitty captain already had to go back to the ship once to get the antidote for the poison. He needed to pee and just took off his suit right here on the island! Thankfully it’s a fairly slow-acting poison, and not overly caustic, so we got him back before anything too bad happened.”

Zoro sighed and rolled his eyes. They should have known better than to put Luffy in a hazmat suit and expect him to _stay_ in it. He nodded curtly at Usopp and took off back up the mountain.

After a couple more rounds of treasure-hunting, Robin sent a note via the bucket conveyer saying that they had reached the maximum safe weight of treasure to carry on the Sunny. So from now on, the three of them were to completely ignore gold and only grab things that might be more valuable by weight.

Franky and Zoro started bringing back only gemstones and the occasional item of silvery metal that didn’t look tarnished. Most of it got sent right back via the bucket system, but once in a while the buckets sent back gold instead, indicating that some of the new items had been kept. A huge pile of their discarded treasure built up at the base of the mountain.

Luffy, meanwhile, had long since lost interest in bringing back ‘interesting stuff’ and had started playing in the piles instead. Usopp quickly joined him, leaving Sanji to fill and empty out the buckets alone.

Zoro pointed and laughed at the cook’s out-of-breath and sweaty state, and immediately a fight broke out between the two of them, leaving Franky as the only Strawhat on the island who remembered their mission.

The cyborg sent a note back to the girls via the bucket relay, and when he got one back, he went to the Mini Merry and made himself comfortable in one of the seats.

***

“Alright bros, time to break it up,” Franky announced a while later. “Cook-bro, Nose-bro, you two are going back to the ship first.”

“Why them first? I’m the captain!” Luffy scowled and tilted his head in confusion.

“I had to think about it for a while, but it’s like the riddle of the cabbage, the goat, and the wolf, you see? If I leave you with nose-bro, or leave sword-bro with cook-bro, then by the time I came back everything would be on fire. Get it? So I have to split those groups! Plus I want to take cook-bro first so he can start making all of us some food right away. I’m hungry.”

Luffy nodded, completely understanding the logic of “I’m hungry,” but not seeming to realize that Franky hadn’t answered why Usopp was going back to the ship before him, the captain.

“So why does Usopp get to go instead of Luffy?” Zoro asked in his place.

“Zoroooo,” Usopp whined, “I have to pee, and Luffy already went!”

“I’m the captain and I say I get to go first!” Luffy declared.

“I’ll mutiny,” Usopp threatened.

Everyone went quiet for a second, remembering Water Seven.

Grumbling, Usopp disembarked and settled on the beach next to Zoro.

Zoro had to pee too, so he had little sympathy. While they waited he distracted himself by drawing designs in the toxic smoke with the tip of a sheathed sword as the Mini Merry chugged away along with their captain, cook, and shipwright.

***

After getting a chance to rid themselves of their hazmat suits and do their other business off the sides of Mini Merry, Zoro and Usopp were both feeling much better about the world in general.

When they approached Sunny, the ship rested noticeably lower in the water, but nowhere near as low as Zoro had expected it to be.

Franky must have caught the curious look Zoro sent him, because he answered his unspoken question.

“Remember that we’re still on the Grand Line. The Florian Triangle might not have any water or air currents, but Sunny still needs to be able to stand up to Grand Line-level storms once we leave the Triangle.”

Zoro and Usopp both nodded in understanding.

***

When he climbed aboard the Sunny, Zoro found himself in the middle of an argument.

“No. Those are Zoro’s,” Luffy said flatly.

“Just a few. Maybe just some of the little ones?” Nami wheedled.

“I said no.”

“What’s going on here?” Zoro interrupted.

“Nami wants to throw your weights overboard,” Luffy answered.

“Just temporarily! When we trade in the gold for 10,000 beri notes then I’ll loan you enough money to buy them back!”

“What,” Zoro ground out, “made you think I’d agree to something like that?”

“I _didn’t_ think you’d agree. That’s why I was trying to get Luffy to do it before you got back.”

“You consider that defending yourself?”

“If you agree to leave all your weights behind…” Nami looked pained, “I’ll… I’ll reduce the interest on your debt.”

“ _Fuck_ , no,” Zoro was furious, “That bullshit debt of yours doesn’t even exist in the first place! You made it up!”

“You agreed to the terms of the loan!”

“It turned out that I didn’t need the loan!”

“Changing circumstances doesn’t void the terms of the verbal contract!” Nami was using fancy words on him again.

“That debt only exists in your head!” Zoro insisted.

“Look, until you get new ones, you can lift weights using sacks of gold instead of iron. Gold is _heavy_ , you know.”

“I’d consider it, if you hadn’t been going behind my back to _throw away my things_.”

“What if I took a few percentage points off your debt?”

“This again? How about: you completely forget about this imaginary debt of yours, and I’ll _think_ about leaving _one_ of my weights behind. But even then you have to buy me a replacement _for free_ as soon as the treasure is traded in.”

“No chance,” Nami said stubbornly.

Zoro folded his arms and glared at her. He wasn’t budging.

Nami made a noise of pure frustration and stormed away.

Zoro was glad that Sanji lacked the upper body and grip strength to handle Zoro’s weights. The cook would have tossed them overboard in a heartbeat as soon as _Nami-swan_ batted her eyelashes at him.

At least Luffy had realized that doing what she asked would be wrong.

Damn it, Nami.

That’s when Sanji stepped out of the galley.

“Hey shitheads, dinner’s gonna be awhile and you guys stink. Go take a bath already.”

It seemed like as good an idea as any. Several of the crew were a little past due for their scheduled baths.

***

The Strawhat crew had an unofficial rule about bath time – every Devil Fruit user must be accompanied by at least one uncursed crewmate while in the room, in case the fruit user fell into the furo.

Chopper and Luffy were both due for baths, so Usopp and Zoro were recruited to join them.

This left Zoro with the Kiddy Trio.

After Zoro washed off all the grime on the wet bench, he sank into the relaxing heat of the furo to unwind and watch the chaos.

As best Zoro could tell, the other three were playing a game called ‘Mermaid Stampede,’ but it may as well have been called ‘Run around screaming while wearing bubbles.’

The Kiddy Trio dashed back and forth through the room, arms in the air, sometimes skating on bars of soap or setting up obstacles to dodge around, until one of them would point and announce, “Wait, now they’re coming from that way!” which started up the screaming and running again.

As long as nobody fell in the furo, Zoro was staying out of it.

Eventually, Franky banged on the door and announced dinner was ready, causing everyone to quickly rinse off the bubbles and dry themselves enough to get dressed.

On their way to supper, Zoro fell into conversation with Luffy.

“I don’t like the clocks,” Luffy said, interrupting Zoro’s thoughts.

“You saw them too? And why not? They didn’t seem to be hurting anything.”

“I kept trying to bring one back, cuz I thought they were cool, but they kept disappearing whenever I turned around to look at something else.”

“I didn’t see the treasure-bird either,” Zoro said.

“Oh, I did.”

“WHAT? You were in a battle and I didn’t even know about it?”

“Nuh-uh,” Luffy shook his head, “I was ready to fight it and stuff, but the bird just opened one eye, looked at me, and then went back to sleep.”

Zoro had no idea what to think about that, “Well, I found a big black ball with smoke pouring out of it,” he said, because it seemed like the next thing to mention.

“Sounds weird.”

“It was.”

***

Over dinner, the crew that had been to the treasure island gave their report of their findings. No one had any idea what to think of the unconcerned bird, the weird disappearing clocks, or the screaming, smoke-emitting black ball.

“When I was making the antidote, the smoke definitely seemed to be biological in origin,” Chopper said, “I would have believed it was dragon’s breath just like the Manoans said if Zoro hadn’t told us about the ball.”

Nobody had any answers.

***

Another mystery, at the moment, was Nami.

Zoro was well aware that the amount of money from the treasure Nami could bring aboard if Zoro got rid of one of his weights would more than make up for both the so-called ‘debt’ _and_ the expense of buying him a new one.

When Nami turned down profit, there was something strange happening.

The navigator had a look he couldn’t understand when Zoro opened the door to her cartography room.

“I guess there’s no avoiding this,” she said with a resigned sigh.

“You’re not acting like yourself,” Zoro replied, “and I need to know why.”

Nami sighed and rubbed her temples with ink-stained fingers, “Zoro, a debt… is a bond.” She stopped there as if that meant something.

“That doesn’t explain anything.”

“Yes it does. You’re just dim.”

“Insulting me isn’t-”

“ _You threatened to leave_!”

There was ringing silence as the first two Strawhat recruits stared at each other. Zoro slowly starting to understand and Nami with tears of fury starting to form in the corners of her eyes.

“Everyone else might think that you’re the most loyal crewmember, but I know better,” Nami pushed back the tears before they could fully form through sheer willpower. “I don’t know what kind of deal you made with Luffy – it happened before we met. But I know there were _strings attached_. I also know that you’re the kind of man who honors his debts, and I’m going to keep you here even if I lose money doing it.”

“I don’t.” Zoro explained carefully, “Acknowledge. Your debt.”

“That’s too damn bad. It exists, and I’m not letting you go until it’s paid.”

“I’ll throw one of my weights overboard myself, and bring on enough gold to pay whatever stupid amount your greedy witch brain made up,” he didn’t know whether playing along with her delusions like this was a good idea, but he said it anyway.

Panic flashed over Nami’s face, “Zoro…”

“Or you could get it through your head that maybe I want to be here. Maybe I don’t want to leave Luffy. Maybe I said what I said _to keep the crew from falling apart_.”

They were silent for a minute.

There was an unspoken bond between the first three Strawhats. Luffy, Zoro, and Nami were in some unexplainable way the trio at the core of the group. When Usopp and Robin had left, Zoro hadn’t been convinced that they would return. But when Nami had declared her betrayal back in East Blue, Zoro had thrown himself into the water while bound with ropes, just to prove she wasn’t willing to let him die. He had trusted her that much.

He was certain of her loyalty, and of Luffy’s. But it seemed like Nami had been questioning his own.

“Promise me you’ll never leave the crew. Promise me, and I’ll forget the whole thing.”

“I can’t do that,” Zoro said, “I swore to chase my ambition no matter what it takes. I don’t want to leave, but I will if I have to.”

“And that,” Nami said, “is the reason I will never let you out of your debt.”

***

That night after his workout, Zoro turned in early to find Luffy already waiting in Zoro’s bunk, wrapped tightly in his blanket. Zoro unwound the surprisingly chilly bundle and climbed in, trying not to hiss at the feeling of cold hands running up his back under his shirt.

Since it was Luffy, his metabolism was either on full blast or barely detectible.

“Hey Luffy,” Zoro whispered, “Maybe you should go to the girls’ room. I think Nami needs you tonight.”

“I started out with Nami, Zoro,” Luffy replied in as close to a whisper as he ever managed, “she told me tonight that you needed me more.”


End file.
